A government spokesman said the deportation order gave Vesco 14 days 'to wind up his affairs in the country, but since it wasn't served it isn't in effect.'
The spokesman, who declined to be identified, would not speculate on whether Vescohad left the Bahamas or simply Nassau.
The Bahamas government refused to renew Vesco's yearly residency permit last month but had granted him an indefinite extension of the November deadline to leave the country.
In a letter to Minister of Home Affairs Clement Maynard this week, Vesco requested political asylum in the Bahamas, where he has spent the last two years of his eight-year flight from prosecution on Watergate-related and financial charges in the United States.
Vesco told the minister he meets criteria for political asylum 'under the accepted doctrines of international law and treaties.' He claimed that ifreturned to the United States, 'I would be persecuted for political motives, de facto tried for political crimes and offenses...and would in fact be punished for my politicial opinions.'
In addition, he said he fears 'the ever-present risk of being clandestinely spirited away or even kidnapped to the United States to be punished for political motives.'
Vesco claimed the FBI and other 'agencies' have tried to 'kidnap' him twice and 'eliminate' him once since he fled the United States.
He told Maynard that all charges that forced him to leave the United States -- including allegations that he plundered his mutual fund of $240,000 and gave former President Richard Nixon an illegal contribution -- have been cleared up in various courts, and he has made restitution to depositors in a Bahamas bank he founded that was liquidated.
Vesco left the United States in 1972, renounced his U.S. citizenship and stayed in Costa Rica until a change in government forced him to leave.
He has been living with his family in a rented house on Providence Island, outside Nassau, since 1978.
